Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

18. Whether he is taking steps to encourage Departments to use environmentally sustainable transport.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)]

The greening Government commitments prescribe all Departments to address the matter of environmentally sustainable transport management by reducing and refining their need to travel through hybrid working and the current location strategy. Departmental locations, where possible, are all within 10 minutes’ walk of a major public transport hub.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will this team wake up? They have huge potential in the Cabinet Office to influence every Department of State. From my perspective, as a passionate supporter of sustainable transport and particularly the revolution that is coming in hydrogen power, I see an inert Department not pushing other Departments to do better. Could they wake up and do something about this?

[Alex Burghart]

I can think of nothing nicer than being woken up by the hon. Gentleman. I can reassure him that we do encourage our colleagues in other Departments to go further on this. We have a range of carbon offsetting programmes in place and, as I say, our location strategy means that we try to locate people near public transport hubs. This is the very essence of a green transport strategy.